Books in Brief

A Radical’s America, by Harvey Swados (Little, Brown, $5.00). The socialist camp in America, it must be conceded, has produced some fine writers; and Harvey Swados is among them. This book is a collection of essays published over the past ten years, and is—despite the approval of Harry Golden—literate and enjoyable reading. Swados discusses the labor movement (complaining that the NLRB is pro-business!), Liberalism (making some points with which weary conservatives might agree), the cultural significance of The Caine Mutiny, today’s youth, some Jewish writers, and Ingemar Johannsen. Through it all, one feels that this middle-aged radical is angry most of all because his socialist credo is as likely to be found in the pronouncements of the Democratic National Committee asitisin Dissent. Or it may just be that Swados is more radical than socialist, and, for a brief moment, he considers the appraisal: “No doubt some will insist that I mislabel myself, that one cannot be at the same time a skeptic and a Socialist… that if America were visited by almost any variety of socialism, from ‘tiptoe’ to ‘total,’ I should be as outraged as I now am…. This may be.”

A. E. GOLL AN

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A Radical’s America, by Harvey Swados (Little, Brown, $5.00). The socialist camp in America, it must be conceded, has produced some fine writers; and Harvey Swados is among them. This book is a collection of essays published over the past ten years, and is—despite the approval of Harry Golden—literate and enjoyable reading. Swados discusses the labor movement (complaining that the NLRB is pro-business!), Liberalism (making some points with which weary conservatives might agree), the cultural significance of The Caine Mutiny, today’s youth, some Jewish writers, and Ingemar Johannsen. Through it all, one feels that this middle-aged radical is angry most of all because his socialist credo is as likely to be found in the pronouncements of the Democratic National Committee asitisin Dissent. Or it may just be that Swados is more radical than socialist, and, for a brief moment, he considers the appraisal: “No doubt some will insist that I mislabel myself, that one cannot be at the same time a skeptic and a Socialist… that if America were visited by almost any variety of socialism, from ‘tiptoe’ to ‘total,’ I should be as outraged as I now am…. This may be.”

A. E. GOLL AN